The Jews of Lugoj: A Synagogue with an Organ in the Heart of the Banat

Lugoj (Hungarian: Lugos), a town on the Timiș river in the heart of the Romanian Banat, was home to one of the oldest Jewish communities in the region: its burial society was founded in 1790 and its first synagogue completed in 1793. The Neolog synagogue on Strada Cuza Vodă, rebuilt in 1843 and remodelled in 1904–1905, still stands, and its organ recalls a musical tradition the community was proud of.

Beginnings

According to the YIVO Encyclopedia entry on Lugoj by the historian Ladislau Gyémánt, a Jewish presence in the town is documented from the late 17th century. In 1733 there were 46 Jews, and their first prayer house was in the home of Aron Deutsch. During the Austro-Turkish war of 1736–1739 it was looted, and a new prayer house was set up in the home of Isac Porldeutsch. The Encyclopaedia Judaica adds that an organised community formed between 1780 and 1790, and that Sephardi Jews took part in founding it alongside the Ashkenazim.

In 1790 a burial society was founded, in 1791 the community applied for permission to build a synagogue, and in 1793 the building was completed. In 1830 the local authorities tried to restrict Jewish settlement; the census of that year counted 32 Jewish families. In 1833 a Jewish school opened, teaching in Hebrew and German; according to the Encyclopaedia Judaica it operated until 1944.

Trade, textiles and Zionism

The community grew quickly in the 19th century: 550 Jews in 1851, 1,303 in 1891 and 1,878 in 1910. Jews played a central role in the town’s textile industry and in natural-silk processing. After emancipation in 1867 and the split in Hungarian Jewry in 1868–1869, the community declared itself Neolog. A women’s association and an orphan-care society were founded in 1875, and a Talmud Torah in 1903. 173 members of the community served in the Hungarian army in the First World War.

Among the rabbis listed by YIVO are Tsevi Hirsh Oppenheimer (in office 1821–1859, also chief rabbi of Timiș County), Salamon Weisz (1860–1895), Simon Hevesi (1897–1905) and Manó Lenke (1905–1940). Hevesi founded, together with non-Jewish intellectuals, popular educational institutions — according to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, the first of their kind in southern Hungary.

After the Banat joined Romania, the number of Jews fell: 1,774 in 1920 (8.8% of the population) and 1,418 in 1930 (6%). The 1930 occupational census shows most of them in commerce, alongside clerks, craftsmen, lawyers, engineers and physicians. The town had the Kiryat Sefer publishing house, and from 1920 to 1940 the bilingual Zionist weekly Neue Zeit–Új Kor appeared here. From 1934 Zionists led the community. The novelist, poet and painter György Szántó (1893–1961) was born in Lugoj.

The synagogue on Strada Cuza Vodă

The sources tell the building’s history slightly differently. According to YIVO, the 1793 synagogue burned in 1842 and was rebuilt in 1843; the Encyclopaedia Judaica speaks of a “large synagogue” built in 1842; and according to Poveștile Sinagogilor (Stories of the Synagogues), a project of the Pantograf Association carried out with the Jewish communities of the Banat, the first synagogue stood in a courtyard on today’s Strada Cuza Vodă, and the new building on the present site was inaugurated in May 1843. The same source, citing the local historian Gheorghe Reisz, says the synagogue was rebuilt in 1904–1905, when the change from Orthodox to Neolog rite brought alterations to the interior. The organ was built in 1903 and the two lamps before the Ark in 1905.

The building is modest in scale and eclectic in style: a façade with four columns and three windows, the Tablets of the Law in the pediment and a rose window of medieval inspiration; the Ark shows neo-Baroque influences. The architect Gabriel Szekély, who wrote the project’s entry, describes it as “a welcoming salon” rather than a monumental building. The synagogue still belongs to the community and is also used for concerts.

Choir and organ

Community life in Lugoj was bound up with music. In a 2001 testimony collected for the book Memoria salvată. Evreii din Banat, ieri și azi (ed. Smaranda Vultur, Polirom, 2002), Hermann Deutsch, born in 1936, recalled festive services with a choir of exceptional voices accompanied by the organ, and the cantors Zitron and Katz, who later moved to Timișoara. At that time, he said, the organ no longer worked and a harmonium was used instead. Judith Lazarovici, born in 1921, remembered the blue, red and yellow windows and the organ her father often played. The choir was called Hazamir, and according to Poveștile Sinagogilor the concert tradition has been revived in recent years and the organ works again. On 7 September 2023 the synagogue hosted a concert of the Echo of the Synagogues (Ecoul Sinagogilor) project, part of the Timișoara European Capital of Culture programme.

The Second World War

Lugoj, like the whole Romanian Banat, remained under Romanian rule in 1940–1944. According to YIVO, Jewish property was confiscated, but the community survived the Holocaust. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, under the fascist regime Jewish men were conscripted for forced labour and many lost their property, and Jewish youths accused of communist activity were deported to Transnistria. Records of the Caraș-Severin county archives, described in a finding aid published by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, mention an “office of expropriated property in Lugoj” — evidence of the administration of property taken from the region’s Jews. The plan to deport the Jews of the Banat and southern Transylvania to camps in Poland, agreed with Germany in 1942, was never carried out and was cancelled. In 1942 the town had 1,043 Jews.

After the war and today

After the war the community grew again with the arrival of refugees from the surrounding districts and from northern Bukovina: in 1947 there were 1,620 Jews in the town. Rabbi Abraham Isac Nebel reorganised the community in 1945. From the 1950s it shrank through emigration, mainly to Israel: 220 Jews in 1971 and about 30 in 2003. Part of the community’s archive survives — the community register begun in 1855 and 19th-century death registers are now held by the National Archives in Timișoara.

The community is still registered with the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania, led by Ivan Eric Bloch. The Jews of neighbouring Caransebeș are affiliated to it.

The cemetery

A burial society has existed in Lugoj since 1790, and the community’s death registers from 1851 onwards survive in the archives. However, we found no current, reliable source describing the town’s Jewish cemetery — its location, size or condition — so no address is given here. Anyone who wishes to visit it should ask the community for details.

Visiting

The Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania lists the community at Strada Cuza Vodă 10, tel. +40 256 351 802. Poveștile Sinagogilor gives the synagogue’s address as Cuza Vodă 8 — on the same street, next to the community offices. We found no regular opening hours, so visits should be arranged in advance with the community. The project’s website also offers a virtual tour of the synagogue.

• The façade: four columns, the Tablets of the Law in the pediment and the rose window
• The Ark with its neo-Baroque touches and the two lamps of 1905
• The organ of 1903
• The coloured windows Judith Lazarovici remembered